The Great Books Series
Jimmy Carter, who confided to NBC’s Brian Williams that “I
feel my role as a former president is probably superior to that of
other presidents,” demonstrates what he means in a few brief
passages from his White House diaries:
October 1 [1980] Fifty-six years old. If I’m reelected, I’ll be
sixty when I go out of office-a good retirement age. […]
October 25 I went to Grand Rapids, Michigan. I found out later I
called it “Cedar Rapids.” […]
October 26 I talked to Amy on the phone about the upcoming
debate. I won’t see her again for about a week. She said that the
atomic bomb was the most important issue, and we had a discussion
about what a kiloton was, what a megaton was. She discusses
international issues, including the hostage crisis, almost like an
adult. […]
Monday, November 3 …Almost all the undecideds moved to Reagan.
Strangely enough, my favorable [ratings] went up-both the way I
handled the Iran situation and the percentage that thought it was
used for political purposes. There was a general sense of rejection
of incumbents. […]
November 4 …Chip and Jeffrey came up to Camp David, also Jody
and Frank Moore and their families later on. We just relaxed with
our children, extremely surprised at how well we all took the
defeat. […]
November 6 I spent all day at Camp David making four very
complicated little fly line drying reels. […]
December 10 …Rickover advised me to stay quiet for a good
while-maybe a couple of years-and then run for president again. He
thinks I would have no trouble in being reelected because Reagan is
both dumb and incompetent… […]
Monday January 19 [1981] Fritz and Joan [Mondale] joined us in
the limousine to drive to Andrews Air Force Base….The mood during
the drive was one of excitement and levity. We made some
disparaging remarks about the quality of Reagan’s inaugural
address, but in general it was a pleasant drive.
(From: White House Diary, by Jimmy Carter. Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 570 pages, $30)
The Progressive
Matthew Rothschild, editor of the Progressive,
apparently after an afternoon spent at the ballpark:
What is happening to our country? I look around, and I do not
recognize it. Bigotry and irrationality are holding sway, and the
most precious American values are under attack. The very character
of our country is at stake.
With economic pain at the highest level ever seen by most
Americans, and with minorities especially hard hit, we’re seeing a
revolt not by people of color, nor the unemployed, nor the
foreclosed upon. Instead, we’re seeing a revolt by the white middle
class. It’s a revolt against the very notion of a positive role for
government in helping people. It’s a revolt against Latin American
immigrants. It’s a revolt against Muslim Americans. And it’s a
revolt against our black President.
(October 2010)
Washington Post
Daft musings of a hopeless romantic, columnist E. J. Dionne,
on the eve of Thermidor:
Is the Tea Party one of the most successful scams in American
history? Before you dismiss the question, note the word
“successful.” Judge the Tea Party purely on the grounds of
effectiveness and you have to admire how a very small group has
shaken American political life and seized the microphone offered by
the media.
But it’s equally important to recognize that the Tea Party
constitutes a sliver of opinion on the extreme end of politics
receiving attention out of all proportion with its numbers.
(September 23, 2010)
New Republic
A mere 18 months after Sam Tanenhaus wrote in the New
Republic “The Conservative Movement Is Dead,” look at this from
young Jonathan Chait in the very same liberal organ of popular
moonshine:
This is a season of liberal disappointment. Or, rather, another
season of liberal disappointment. Liberal disappointment follows
liberal triumph as night follows day. It is a multitudinous thing,
it varies including, but not limited to, despair, recrimination,
impotent rage, potent rage, and existential angst.
(September 23, 2010)
The Nation
An explanation for your anger at Glenn Beck, if you happen
to be a Black Nationalist contemplating reparations, provided by
columnist and resident race hustler, Ms. Melissa
Harris-Lacewell:
Many Americans were enraged by Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor”
rally in Washington, presumably because Beck trespasses on a sacred
day on a holy ground by scheduling his event to coincide with the
anniversary and location of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a
Dream” speech. Media framed the anti-Beck dissent as a racial and
political turf war. Beck stood before a vastly white, sharply
political crowd and waxed nostalgic about America’s past, a past he
called honorable and righteous, but that was, in reality, marked by
the legal subjugation of black people. This seems an obvious
denigration of the civil rights history.
(September 20, 2010)
Washington Post
Inscrutable reflections from Reformed Conservative Kathleen
Parker, who ends this dithyramb by actually bringing in “the
shrinks” from her sexual hygiene show on CNN, “Parker Spitzer,” and
soliciting their explanation as to why the Prophet Obama “can’t
seem to connect with the American people”:
Of course I knew it all along. President Obama is a Kenyan
anti-colonialist and that’s why he doesn’t get us. He’s a ticked
off African.
So goes the latest in Obama-theory, originated by the usually
rational conservative thinker Dinesh D’Souza and endorsed by none
other than Newt Gingrich, Republican anarchist and onetime speaker
of the House of Representatives.
Cue soundtrack to “Twilight Zone.” Or “Psycho.” Or, I dunno,
Tarzan summoning an elephant stampede to quash yet another
pestilential imperial invasion.
Actually, scratch that. Call in the shrinks and bring out the
couch….
(September 15, 2010)
New York Daily News
Once again, the celebrated liberal columnist Errol Louis
confuses the now defunct USSR and Nazi Germany with the
USA:
Until recently, I shared Mayor Bloomberg’s prediction that the
current wave of anti-Muslim demagoguery being fanned by pols like
Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Rick Lazio would die down after the
midterm elections. Now I’m not so sure.
The tide of anti-Islamic rhetoric-from subtle religious putdowns
to open bigotry and even physical attacks-echoes America’s history
of organizing social movements and political parties around the
idea of doing combat with one national enemy or another.
In the name of battling The Enemy, political leaders can ignore
or preempt seemingly less-important national priorities and instead
mobilize billions of dollars and millions of lives in service to
the great cause.
(September 9, 2010)
From the Archives
Timeless Tosh from Current Wisdoms Past
(November 1990)
New York Times Book Review
Whilst reviewing Ms. Susan Rubin Suleiman’s latest tome,
Professor Perry Meisel deposits still more evidence that as long as
the American system of higher education is in place there is no
reason for maintaining a system of state insane asylums:
It is something of a commonplace to observe that the conjunction
of three trends of thought over the last two decades-feminism,
psychoanalysis, and deconstruction-has produced a powerful style of
American academic criticism that cannot be ignored….
What Ms. Suleiman is saying at any given time, however, is hard
to summarize; her prose reflects the kind of fluid feminist poetics
for which she argues thematically. Feminist criticism, it appears,
like feminist fiction, must be a kind of writing that refuses the
straightforwardness of male writing, including its armory of values
such as clarity, concision, and pointedness, all of which can be
interpreted as masquerades for the male lust for power, replicating
the structure of male sexual pleasure.
(August 5, 1990)
Mother Jones
The scientific mind as it exists among readers of an
illustrious journal of the New Age:
Gifts: Penis poster (23” x 35”) depicts 12 animal penises (man
to whale). Scientific novelty. Send $10 postpaid to: Poster G. PO
Box 673, Bloomington, IN 47402.
(August 1990)
Deer Park(100% Natural Spring Water)
Schizophrenic cheers and admonitions found on the label of Deer
Park bottled water:
Smaller Cap = Less Plastic
Did you notice this bottle has an Eco-Slim cap? This is part of
our ongoing effort to reduce our impact on the environment. This
bottle and cap contain an average of 20% less plastic than our
original 500 mL Eco-Shape bottle and cap. Be Green.
WARNING: Cap is a small part and poses a CHOKING HAZARD,
particularly for children.
(Summer 2010)
